Lamb Weston is the world’s largest producer of fries and frozen potato products. From fast food conglomerates to the frozen food aisle of your neighbourhood grocery store, Lamb Weston sells over 80 million portions of fries around the world every day.

To make that happen, Lamb Weston employs over 6,000 people worldwide, with 14 manufacturing and food processing facilities in North America alone. But no matter where they’re produced or for whom, Lamb Weston prides itself on quality products and customer satisfaction. The exact specs desired by each customer vary depending on the customer type (fast food restaurant versus hospitality industry versus consumer/grocer) as these parameters have a direct impact on details like plate presence, crispiness, and hold times. All of these characteristics are affected by solids (moisture) levels, fat content, and in the case of sweet potatoes – total sugar or surface moisture – in the potatoes as they go through the production process. Whether carving out curly fries or stamping sweet potato CrissCut® fries, it’s impossible to produce a uniform, quality product in so many locations at that volume without exceptional quality control processes in place. This is where Lamb Weston turns to Unity Scientific.

Quality Control Experts

Since the company was established in 2001, Unity Scientific has been providing NIR analysers for a number of different industries, including food production. For the past 10 years, Lamb Weston has relied on NIR analysers from Unity Scientific to ensure quality and consistency for their customers. To that end, for their fry production lines, there are two points in the process where Lamb Weston utilises the Unity Scientific SpectraStar analyers. The first location is at-line after the fryer, which allows for rapid determination of solids on the production floor. The second location is in the lab, where grab samples are taken when the product is first frozen for a final quality test before packaging and shipping. If the solids levels are too low, spoilage increases. If the solids levels are too high, crispiness suffers.

Lamb Weston offers over 90 different styles of fries, from “Steak Cut Skin On” to “Regular Cut” to “Thin Crinkle Cut” and “Shoestrings,” and each customer requires different specs for each product. “When Lamb Weston first brought us on board, it took a while to get the levels right for each of the products and to match all the specs for each one of their customers,” says Dan Evans, Unity Scientific Key Account Manager and Lamb Weston’s primary contact at Unity. “But now that we have them identified we know the exact settings for each production line at each plant, so it’s just minor adjustments here and there.”

Historically, the testing and analysis for quality control in food processing was done manually without timely controls that fed back into the process. Since the SpectraStar analyser solution provides accurate real-time readings in only 20-30 seconds, the plant operators now have the feedback needed to make rapid adjustments (i.e. fryer time and blancher process…) and consistently produce on spec product.

User friendly

Unity Scientific has designed the SpectraStar analyser to be dependable, easy-to-use, simple to clean, and easy to calibrate. Users can quickly wipe it down and clean it off after each shift, and it only requires service once a year. Calibrating the SpectraStar can be done in-house in a matter of minutes, making it the ultimate user-friendly instrument. Competitive products, on the other hand, often need to be shipped back to the factory to be recalibrated.

Should the SpectraStar analyser need to be serviced other than the recommended once-a-year visit from a service tech, Unity Scientific prides itself in getting service personnel onsite as quickly as possible to minimise downtime for the customer. For troubleshooting the SpectraStar, Unity Scientific has also designed in a “remote access mode” that allows the customer to give permission to off-site Unity service personnel to securely log into the analyser over the internet and check the status to see what’s happening with the unit.

Reliable real-time data

“The SpectraStar analysers that we have in our plants are very dependable,” says Thu Thuy Thomas, Director Technologist at the Lamb Weston R&D Innovation Center in Richland, WA. “They give us the accurate real-time data we need to ensure the quality of our products. And if the analysers have ever needed service, the Unity Scientific team has been very responsive and very helpful. We’ve used them for years and they’ve been great for us.”